[
US
/ˈbɪtɝ/
]
[ UK /bˈɪtɐ/ ]
[ UK /bˈɪtɐ/ ]
ADJECTIVE
-
very difficult to accept or bear
the bitter truth
a bitter sorrow -
harsh or corrosive in tone
bitter words
an acerbic tone piercing otherwise flowery prose
caustic jokes about political assassination, talk-show hosts and medical ethics
blistering criticism
a sulfurous denunciation
her acrid remarks make her many enemies
a vitriolic critique
a barrage of acid comments -
causing a sharply painful or stinging sensation; used especially of cold
bitter cold
bitter cold
a biting wind -
proceeding from or exhibiting great hostility or animosity
bitter enemies
a bitter struggle -
causing a sharp and acrid taste experience
quinine is bitter -
marked by strong resentment or cynicism
bitter about the divorce
an acrimonious dispute -
expressive of severe grief or regret
shed bitter tears
NOUN
- the taste experience when quinine or coffee is taken into the mouth
- English term for a dry sharp-tasting ale with strong flavor of hops (usually on draft)
- the property of having a harsh unpleasant taste
VERB
- make bitter
ADVERB
-
extremely and sharply
bitter cold
it was bitterly cold
bitter cold
How To Use bitter In A Sentence
- This is not good for anybody, except for a few curmudgeons and people who are embittered by nothing more than their own embitteredness.
- He is engaged in a bitter struggle with his rival to get control of the company.
- They are now locked in a bitter custody battle over their three children.
- Gwenhidwy likes to drink a lot, grain alcohol mostly, mixed in great strange mad-scientist concoctions with beef tea, grenadine, cough syrup, bitter belch-gathering infusions of blue scullcap, valerian root, motherwort and lady's-slipper, whatever's to hand really. Gravity's Rainbow
- There is a great deal of feeling and perhaps some bitterness, but do you not all agree with me that it is quite possible, since there is a fashion of armament in Europe, and since there has been no withdrawal on the part of the Admiralty from the stand taken by the First Lord some months ago, to have the entire Canadian people approach this situation in a calm and in an impartial manner? Canada and the Empire
- ‘Break, break, break,’ for instance, is a bitter poem on unrecompensed, pointless loss, but it achieves its power and makes its point very indirectly, largely through structural implications.
- His wife shopped him to me with a bitter complaint about his clothes bill.
- All the more perhaps for that, she was born sagacious, which is a less pleasing, but, in a bitter pinch, a more really useful, quality. Erema — My Father's Sin
- His work is thus marked with a bitter irony which permeated not only the substance of his theory but also its method.
- It is true that, even at the time of the discovery of nitrobenzol, he pointed out the striking similarity of its smell to that of the oil of bitter almonds. The Art of Perfumery And Methods of Obtaining the Odors of Plants
